Letter from Florida: Verdi reminds us to grieve for and remember soldiers everywhere – the Messa da Requiem from Cleveland Orchestra

Verdi: Requiem – Asmik Grigorian, Deniz Uzan, Joshua Guerrero, Tareq Nazmi, Cleveland Orchestra, Taichi Fukumura – Adrienne Arsht Center (Photo: Alex Marlow)

Verdi: Requiem; Asmik Grigorian, Deniz Uzan, Joshua Guerrero, Tareq Nazmi, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra, Taichi Fukumura; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 24 January 2026

Notwithstanding the indisposition of Franz Welser-Möst, Robert J Carreras enjoys the immensity of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem as part of the Cleveland Orchestra‘s residency in Miami

Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem is a mighty musical memorial to mortality that reminds us both of our fate, and our promise. Though much of a human life takes place in a minor key, those of us graced with enough major key modulations remember the same in Verdi’s Requiem. 

This pilastro of opera reworked his sad and blue minor key moments, transposing them into and transmuting them through the best of times. Verdi became a mighty “soldier of culture” – for Italy, and for all man. Through his life with his art, Verdi reminds us that all, every one of us has expiration dates; every breath you take is one less you have. What will you do with your breaths? 

The collective breaths of those in attendance this evening were held for a moment when Cleveland Orchestra President and CEO Andre Gremillet came out to announce the indisposition of Music Director and Principal Conductor Franz Welser-Möst. Taichi Fukumura, Cleveland’s Assistant Conductor and Music Director to the Youth Orchestra, took to the podium in his place. 

No one will ever catch Cleveland Orchestra musicians underprepared, so Fukumura only needed to provide a solid beat and a little heat to get through the night well. The Japanese-American conductor surpassed that baseline, as Joshua Guerrero can attest. Portraying the tenor part in this Requiem, Guerrero admired Fukumura’s conducting at many points during the evening.

Verdi: Requiem – The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus – Adrienne Arsht Center (Photo: Alex Marlow)

Fukumura distinguished himself by keeping musical matters steady and also by what he got out of the double chorus, also known to classical music intelligentsia as the “second orchestra” in this work, a group of over 100 strong.

Classical music annuls have long and lengthily recorded how Giuseppe Verdi breaks with the requiem form through his dramatic (early critics heckled it operatic) use of orchestra and principal singers. This piece differs from the traditional requiem in another way – in the ubiquitous presence of major keys, and Verdi’s alternating between those and minor keys. 

“Requiem aeternam” begins in A minor – the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus gave this prayerful call to soldiers departed sumptuous sonic space in brilliantly executed hushed tones, the phrasing sophisticatedly metered and expansive.

“Dies irae” takes up the bulk of and is the centerpiece to this Requiem. It includes its best known music, from its frequent use in popular culture media. The chorus reached a level of colossal yet contained chaos in portraying this “Day of Wrath” now, then honored Verdi in his honoring of how minor keys weigh on the soul. 

Cleveland Orchestra is in prime shape here – in G minor with the offsetting B-Flat major mood of the “Tuba mirum,” playing its brass fanfare with great power and precision. The chorus returned to hallowing haunts of whispers in the “Rex tremendae” – in C Minor and E-Flat Major. Their depiction of Verdi’s sotto voce markings sought to awaken wonder in the listener.

Cleveland Orchestra downshifts their breaths from the G minor intensity of this section into the G major fineness of the “Amen” in the “Lacrymosa” with utmost delicacy and a shimmering, hovering hum of consolation just at the shell of the soundscape. Through B flat major (“Lux aeterna”) and B minor, and then returning to G minor, Cleveland Orchestra maintains its mastery over the long emotional arc of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem.

The principal singers for this evening are among the greatest performing on world stages today; each is in exemplary command of their voice and each is of the decorum Verdi desired for this memorial milieu.

Even if you have a soft spot for operatic titans, no amount of preceding ballyhoo will prepare you for a first experience of Asmik Grigorian. Habemus soprano. In Grigorian is an artistry that spans and pops off talent meters, enigmatically, mysteriously. She herself is a bit of an enigma, never mind Verdi’s ethereal soprano part here. Her eyes can seem opaque and searching, or piercing and probing; her physique can seem lissom and somehow, at the same time, frangible. This is all magnified by the extraordinary forces that are her vocalism. 

Grigorian arches her back, a move that seems to be a part of her interpretive technique, and uses her hands and fingers in a most engaging way. The soprano arched back, closing in on Deniz Uzun, to meet the mezzo for time, harmonic, and interpretive effects. 

It took a moment – far into “Dies irae” – to hone in on the source of Uzun’s relentless beat of beautiful tone, to place where a similar sound and vocal production had been heard from the past – Fedora Barbieri. Uzun’s tone is just that much brighter, a stone or two lighter.

The impossible has happened: I have lived to hear a bleat and a handsome, Italianate ring exist together in a tenor. There it is in Joshua Guerrero. Tonight, the ring was inconsistently produced throughout his range. However, the moments when it hit square at F4 and G4, and at B flat – yowza, it vaulted through the hall with super squillo. Stylistically speaking, it doesn’t get much better than Mr. Guerrero. Textually speaking, and in this group, Guerrero is the most versed in Verdi and with this Requiem.

Bass Tareq Nazmi lent a suspect and discriminating eye to this part. He stared right back at wrath and judgment, and his bass bore a dreadful tunnel straight through to the back of the hall. As often as this bass part is accompanied by soft woodwinds, soft cellos, and muted strings, the important matter of text is conveyed clearly by Nazmi tonight. 

Giuseppe Verdi would want us to remember that the soloists for his Requiem sing and breathe along with the chorus. They are part of the chorus, and so it is that the principals hit their ensemble stride in the D-flat minor air of the “Sanctus.”

Deliverance is sealed as soldiers in the afterlife search for peace in C major, when Cleveland Orchestra shifts masterfully into the final hymn of “Libera me,” Grigorian gifting the audience with – by any standard – a haloed parlando performance. 

For our goodbye for now, let’s remember the jazz room and Cole Porter’s sad swan song to goodbyes. “There’s no love song finer…but how strange the change from major to minor…every time we say goodbye.” Remember the blues now with the piano man, William Martin Joel. “But only songs like these…played in the minor keys…keep those memories holding on.”

Soldiering on for culture proved to be more mighty and more lasting than the rifle for Giuseppe Verdi. Through both the minor and major keys of life, Verdi kept in step with his promise through his life with his art. With his breaths, he created music to remember; and with this Messa da Requiem, Verdi reminds us to grieve for and remember soldiers everywhere. 

All soldiers ridiculed, all soldiers captured, all soldiers handicapped, all soldiers maimed, all soldiers killed in cold blood. Remember, until our last breath, and our last goodbye.

 

Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County
 
Set in the heart of downtown Miami, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County is committed to welcoming and connecting ALL people to the arts, to the Arsht Center, and to each other. The Arsht Center is also a home stage for three resident companies —Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet, and New World Symphony — and a launch pad for local artists to make their mark on the international stage.

The Cleveland Orchestra’s Miami Residency was launched in partnership with the Adrienne Arsht Center in January 2007 during the Center’s inaugural season. Over the course of 17 seasons, The Cleveland Orchestra has served the Miami-Dade community with an array of musical presentations, including a series of subscription concerts, education programs, and community engagement activities. Since 2007, The Cleveland Orchestra has presented free daytime concerts and education programs to nearly 60,000 Miami-Dade County Public School District students — engaging with them through performances, coaching, mentorship opportunities, and special music programs.